Another O'Keeffe emerges for exhibit: Georgia's sister Ida

Jamie Stengle, Associated Press

Updated 10:35 am, Monday, May 14, 2018

DALLAS (AP) — The abstract painting of a lighthouse caught the eye of Dallas Museum of Art curator Sue Canterbury as she visited a private collector about five years ago. Struggling to identify the artist, she walked up to the work and looked at the signature. "I was like everyone else is to whom I speak about her now: 'Ida O'Keeffe?'"

Canterbury has spent the ensuing years tracking down the works of renowned artist Georgia O'Keeffe's sister Ida Ten Eyck O'Keeffe. When the exhibit "Ida O'Keeffe: Escaping Georgia's Shadow" opens on Nov. 18 at the Dallas museum it will feature about 30 of her works, and Canterbury still hopes to find more, including the one painting from a series of seven depicting a Cape Cod lighthouse that she hasn't yet located.

"It's been really difficult and there are works that I have really great pictures of them, but they've disappeared into collections somewhere and not even dealers can help me find where they are," Canterbury said.

Serendipity has played a role in her search. Jewelry designer Neil Lane got in touch with Canterbury after seeing information about her quest online. He had one of the lighthouse paintings, which he had bought some 25 years ago at a Los Angeles-area flea market. "It was beautiful and well done," Lane said, adding, "It has substance. It wasn't just an amateur."

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It is 250 years since the death of Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto. To mark the anniversary Rome is hosting a major exhibition of the Venice-born painter's works at the Palazzo Braschi.
The works have been gathered from museums around the world, including Moscow, Paris, Budapest, London, Wien, Boston, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Milan, Turin, Rome and Venice.
His descriptive paintings, with their hyper-realistic level of detail, became the most famous iconography of Venice in the 18th century.
He was known for slightly altering the perspective, the colours and daily life along the canals in order to please northern European tastes. The colours became warmer and the perspective wider, as if he was using a sort of fish eye.
Canaletto became very esteemed and sought after by rich British art lovers but according to the exhibition curator, Bożena Anna Kowalczyk, there were people who thought him a difficult artist to deal with:
"We are aware of the fact that there are the opinions of the English agents and clients who described him as a greedy and stingy artist who was changing the price every day and as somebody you had to be very careful with as he could not deliver the painting. Basically you had to take a lot of precautions to deal with him. But I think this is a sort of fictional image, also because the idea of such a self-confident artist works and is attractive. But in the end I believe that Canaletto was a humble, calm man who loved his work, loved Venice.
The exhibition runs until August 19.

Media: Euronews

Ida O'Keeffe painted the lighthouse series in 1933 and kept them with her until her death in 1961 at the age of 71. Canterbury believes the one lighthouse painting she hasn't been able to find — the first and most realistic of the abstract series — is probably in California.

After Ida O'Keeffe died in Whittier, near Los Angeles, her artwork went to her sister Claudia O'Keeffe, who lived nearby. After Claudia O'Keeffe died in 1984, Ida O'Keeffe's works began to trickle out into the public.

One notable difference between Georgia and Ida O'Keeffe was the time they were able to spend focused on their art. Georgia benefited from the support of the man who eventually became her husband, the acclaimed photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz.

Ida O'Keeffe, a professionally trained artist who got a master's in fine arts from Columbia University, squeezed in creating art and exhibiting it while working a series of jobs that included teaching art at schools and working as a nurse.

"There were no saviors for Ida," Canterbury said. "Accounts say Ida said to Georgia on more than one occasion: 'I'd be famous, too, if I'd have had a Stieglitz,' which drove Georgia nuts."

The sisters grew apart after Georgia O'Keeffe, one of America's most successful artists by the mid-1920s, didn't support her sister's artistic endeavors. "She didn't want anyone riding on her name — the other O'Keeffe sister — and that's the way all the dealers were positioning it," Canterbury said.

Barbara Buhler Lynes, a leading Georgia O'Keeffe scholar and former curator of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, said Georgia O'Keeffe discouraged other family members from trying to become artists.

"It was very difficult for a woman to be recognized as an important artist," Lynes said. "To have two in the same family vying for the same position, on some level you can see it as her rejecting her sister; on the other hand you could see it as a very practical thing."

Lynes said that while, for her, Ida O'Keeffe's work isn't as "powerful" as Georgia O'Keeffe's, it "has a sense of presence" and is "recognizably interesting."

"Some of (Georgia) O'Keeffe's are better than others and some of Ida's are better than others," Lynes said, "Some of Ida O'Keeffe's works are really quite great. I mean they're really quite wonderful."